Response to Casey Peacock's Organs for Sale

In Casey's blog about selling organs she does a great job explaining the debate that arises about selling organs.  She explains multiple sides of the issue from different perspectives.  First she mentions that from the sellers point of view selling organs makes logical and economical sense.  She compares selling plasma to selling an organ which is an interesting perspective.  She then explains the other side of the issue, the side of the buyers.  The buyers would be forced to pay extremely high prices in order to save their lives.  This would mean that many people wouldn't be able to afford to save their lives and it raises ethical issues.  Is it fair that only the wealthy can afford to buy organs?  Casey links the article Sell Organs to Save Lives to her blog.  I find both the article and Casey's blog very informative and thought provoking.  I think that I agree with Casey's idea of the sale of organs being ethically wrong.  I feel like we can't give the right to live a price tag.  I also believe that the sale of organs would create a lot of new unforeseen problems and corruption in the health care system.  Casey's blog can be found at http://cpeacocklsc100f09.blogspot.com/.

Technorati Search: Autism

After searching Technorati for awhile I finally found a blog that interested me.  The blog is written by Jennifer Bush and is titled, "Study Claims Children Can Recover From Autism".  This blog interested me because I did my research paper on autism and I didn't find any research that supported this idea.  I wanted to find out more about the possibility of being able to recover from autism and picked this article.  This blog has been active since November 16, 2010, so it is only a week or so old.  This is Jennifer Bush's first blog, and she posted it because she has a son that has autism and wanted to raise awareness.  She linked two different websites to her post, and also included a picture in her post.  After reading Jennifer's  blog I found that she seemed very educated in her post.  She talked about the article and autism in an intelligent, but yet easy to understand way.  Her blog differed from a research paper in that she used a more informal perspective of writing, mentioning her own views and also her sons story.  I found the blog very informative, but the title was a little misleading.  As Jennifer mentions, the idea of autism being curable is false.  Children with autism may be able to improve their skills and learning ability, but the biology remains unchanged.  She explains that her sons brain works differently than a normal brain, and probably always will.  Here is the blog if you are interested in checking it out for yourself. Study Claims Children can Recover from Autism

Self Evaluation

After watching the video of my demonstration speech it is easy to see what I did well, but also and more important, the things I could of improved on and didn’t do so well.  I thought my overall presentation went well, but I feel like there were a lot of things I could’ve did better.  While it’s easy to look back at my speech and critique it, I also realize that at the time I was very nervous and that was easy to see. 

I will start off by saying some things that I thought I did well during my speech.  The first thing that I thought I did well was preparing for my speech.  I had note cards made and I had practiced my speech several times.  I thought I dressed well for the presentation, wearing appropriate clothes for my speech topic.  The second thing I thought I did well in my speech is that I made good eye contact with the audience.  Even though I used note cards at times I maintained eye contact with the audience for the majority of my speech.  The final thing I did well in the speech is I thought I had clear steps that were easy to understand while I was showing how to tie a tie.

So while I thought I did pretty well overall, there are three main things I think I can improve on.  I felt like I got off topic a couple of times and rambled on about stuff that wasn’t important to the speech.  This not only was boring to the audience, it also made my speech go way over the five minute mark.  I also thought that I repeated a lot of the same information and at times had a loss of words.  This was most likely because I was nervous, but could have been prevented if I would’ve practiced my speech in front of other people.  The third thing I feel I could have done better is to have made a catchy and easy phrase to help learn how to tie a tie. 

While it is easy to look back at my speech and judge it, I feel like I did pretty well on it.  There are defiantly things I can fix and grow on for next time, but also try to keep the good things I did. 

My speech video

Blog #3 Organs for Sale

While breakthroughs in science have allowed scientists to grow organs from stem cells, it still remains highly controversial.  This brings us back to organ donations as the only way for a person to receive an organ that literally could mean the difference from life and death.  But what about the organ donors, is it fair that they don’t receive some kind of compensation for their organs?  Should there be a set price for an organ, or should organs be auctioned off to the highest bidder?   The idea of selling organs is highly controversial and outlawed in the United States.  I am against the idea of an individual having a right to sell their organs.  I think that giving people the right to sell their organs will create a magnitude of problems including only wealthy individuals being able to receive organ donations, as well as people in poverty selling parts of their body they need just to make a quick buck.  I believe that everyone should have the right to receive an organ, and it shouldn’t be reserved for just the wealthy that can afford it. 

After reading the article Sell Organs to Save Lives my opinion on selling organs has not changed.  While I understand that people have the right to do what they want with their bodies, I don’t think anyone has the right to sell their organs.  The author of this article claims that allowing people to sell their organs could help reduce the backlog.  While this might be somewhat true, I believe that the price of an organ would be far too great for most people in today’s economy to afford.  I believe that the selling of organs would mean that only the wealthy could afford to receive organ transplants.  I also believe that many people who would have donated their organs would not want them to be sold.  This point is pointed out in the article, and shows that the selling of organs does not automatically equal a greater supply of organs. 

Rebecca Skloot Blog

Rebecca was introduced by Biddy Martin, and started off by giving a summary of her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  She read several passages from the book, and talked about their significance.  Rebecca shared stories about her research and her relationship with the Lacks family, particularly Debera, Henrietta's daughter.  She explained that while writing this story she wanted to maintain a neutral and unbiased position and that she wanted to keep herself out of the story.  However, because she became so close to the Lacks family, she had to include herself in the book as a character, because she had played an important role to the family.  i found it interesting to learn about Rebecca's interaction with Henrietta's family, and also the doctors and researchers that were on the other side.  Rebecca explained that many of the researchers using HeLa cells didn't know where they actually originated from, and some of the researchers were even lied to about where HeLa cells originated.  I also found it interesting that many of the researchers were fascinated by the truth of the HeLa cells, but that no one knows why Henrietta's cells are immortal.